Podcast: God Squad: Love thy neighbor. No exceptions?
Site Navigation
Search
Latest Stories
Join a growing community committed to civic renewal.
Subscribe to The Fulcrum and be part of the conversation.
Top Stories
Latest news
Read More
American soldier in headquarter control center
Getty Images
Why America Must Rethink Its Counterterrorism Strategy in Nigeria
Nov 11, 2026
When American forces conducted airstrikes against suspected Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day 2025, the operation signaled a renewal of security cooperation between Washington and Abuja. Yet for Nigerians living in communities plagued by terrorism, kidnapping, and armed attacks, a critical question remained: Will these strikes make their daily lives any safer?
That question demands serious consideration in Washington. The United States has spent decades helping Nigeria combat terrorism through military equipment, intelligence sharing, and tactical training. Yet, armed violence continues to disrupt daily life across northern Nigeria, raising doubts about how the effectiveness of American counterterrorism assistance should be measured.
The December operations followed a diplomatic dispute in which President Donald Trump accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians and threatened military intervention. Nigeria subsequently welcomed U.S. assistance, leading to coordinated strikes against suspected militants in Sokoto State.
While military strikes can disrupt terrorist operations, destroy equipment, and neutralize commanders, they cannot single-handedly guarantee community safety or restore public trust in government institutions.
The United States and Nigeria have maintained security ties for over five decades. According to a 2024 State Department fact sheet, Washington held $590 million in active government-to-government military sales cases with Nigeria. Major transactions included a $497 million deal for 12 A-29 Super Tucano aircraft and a $997 million deal for 12 AH-1Z attack helicopters.
Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, the United States also provided more than $8 million in counterterrorism training, equipment, and advisory support, along with approximately $5 million for international military education and training. These figures encompass various programs and stages of assistance rather than a single lump sum already expended.
This partnership extends beyond defense hardware to include military professionalization, intelligence sharing, border security, and initiatives to enhance accountability within Nigeria's security sector.
Although these investments have strengthened aspects of Nigeria's military capabilities, civilians' persistent vulnerability raises a broader question: How should success ultimately be defined?
In northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have sustained an insurgency that has devastated communities across the Lake Chad Basin. Meanwhile, in the northwest, armed bandit networks have expanded kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, and raids on rural settlements. Although some groups operate in overlapping areas, their motivations and organizational structures differ significantly.
That distinction matters: treating every armed group strictly as a terrorist organization risks overlooking the criminal economies, local grievances, and law enforcement failures that sustain different forms of violence.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded more than 400 kidnapping incidents across northwest Nigeria in 2026 by the time of its analysis. In June, at least 39 civilians were abducted in Maradun, Zamfara State, after traveling to negotiate peace terms with an armed group.
A separate ACLED assessment found that armed bandits accounted for more than 80 percent of recorded mass abductions since the beginning of 2025.
These figures do not mean U.S. counterterrorism operations have failed; rather, they demonstrate that Nigeria's civilian security crisis extends far beyond the militant organizations targeted by airstrikes.
Having reported on terrorism and violent conflict in northern Nigeria, I have witnessed how insecurity paralyzes communities long after the immediate violence subsides. Farmers struggle to cultivate their fields, families live in constant fear, and residents face travel restrictions that disrupt ordinary economic and social life.
For those living under these conditions, security is measured less by the body count of neutralized militants than by whether they can travel safely, earn a living, and send their children to school.
This is where Washington should reconsider its approach.
The United States and Nigeria have already recognized the necessity of broader security reforms. During the 2024 U.S.–Nigeria Binational Commission, both governments committed to expanding military and law enforcement cooperation while prioritizing civilian protection, human rights, and democratic principles.
They proposed establishing a standing security working group and enhancing joint efforts in border and aviation security, anti-terrorist financing, criminal investigations, and explosives detection. Discussions also focused on creating specialized police anti-kidnapping units, improving oversight mechanisms, mapping crime, advancing police reform, and strengthening judicial institutions.
Furthermore, their commitments encompassed civilian harm mitigation, community peacebuilding, farmer–herder conflict resolution, and the safeguarding of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and religious liberty.
These mutual agreements offer a framework for evaluating whether security cooperation is making a tangible difference on the ground. Washington should actively advocate for transparent assessments of civilian casualties, kidnapping metrics, accountability for human rights abuses, and the safe return of displaced communities.
It should also invest in supporting Nigerian civil and judicial institutions capable of investigating and prosecuting violent crimes, rather than relying primarily on military solutions.
While protecting religious freedom must remain a priority, Nigeria's security crisis cannot be viewed solely through the lens of attacks on Christian communities. Muslims have also suffered extensively from terrorism and banditry. A comprehensive policy aimed at protecting all civilians will far better address the nation's complex security realities.
The stakes extend well beyond Nigeria's borders. As Africa's most populous nation and a key regional democracy, Nigeria is central to West African stability and global cooperation. Persistent insecurity erodes public confidence in elected leaders, suppresses civic participation, and creates power vacuums that armed groups exploit.
For the United States, supporting Nigeria involves far more than neutralizing terrorist organizations—it means helping a strategic democratic partner build trusted governance and judicial institutions.
A robust bilateral relationship should align security assistance with civilian protection, public accountability, and sustained diplomatic engagement. Such an approach would demonstrate that U.S. foreign policy can effectively advance democratic governance while confronting violent extremism.
Ultimately, the success of U.S.–Nigeria counterterrorism efforts must be judged by whether ordinary Nigerians can live free from fear, participate in civic life, and trust the institutions charged with their protection. Until these outcomes serve as the primary metrics of progress, even successful military strikes will remain an incomplete response to Nigeria's complex security challenges.
Idris Mohammed is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama concentrating in Journalism & Creative Media and a fall Fulcrum Fellow.
Keep ReadingShow less
Recommended
American flag behind barbed wire
Photo provided
A Question of Trust: What Maryland’s New Laws Mean for Immigrant Communities
Nov 11, 2026
On October 1, Maryland’s Public Safety Law, which bars police officers from wearing face masks, went into effect across the state. Within hours, the U.S. Justice Department sued the state and two of its most liberal counties, Montgomery and Prince George’s, which had passed similar legislation earlier in the year.
The 2020 Census ranked Maryland as the most diverse state on the East Coast and fourth in the nation. As a Democratic-led state with a Democratic governor, Maryland has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration since the start of the president’s second term. The mask ban is the latest in a series of laws passed in 2026 to protect immigrant communities across the state.
Earlier this year, Governor Wes Moore signed legislation barring Maryland jurisdictions from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The law ended 287(g) agreements, which allowed local officers to transfer people booked into jails directly to ICE, even if they had not been convicted of a crime. The Community Trust Act, passed a few months later, set additional limits on collaboration between local police and ICE.
The state simultaneously approved the Maryland Data Privacy Act, which forbids local agencies and private businesses from sharing personal information for immigration enforcement. In June, Maryland expanded its guidelines on “sensitive locations” originally outlined in the Maryland Values Act of 2025 to include schools, school vehicles, designated school bus stops, public libraries, and courthouses.
“The legislation we have in Maryland protects basic constitutional rights,” Ninfa Amador-Hernandez, policy manager for We Are CASA Maryland, told The Fulcrum. The group is the state chapter of a national organization that works to empower and improve the lives of Black, Latino, Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and immigrant communities. “We don’t want our taxpayers’ dollars to add more fuel to the fire of mass deportations. Immigration enforcement is the duty of the federal government. We should not be spending our scarce resources on that.”
Opposition exists, especially in the state’s conservative areas. In May, sheriffs representing 17 of Maryland’s 24 counties filed a civil lawsuit challenging the ban on 287(g) agreements. They argue it undermines public safety by preventing local law enforcement from sharing critical information about criminal suspects with federal agencies. Limiting collaboration with ICE, they say, also prevents sheriffs from advocating for wrongly detained immigrants.
“I used to be able to pick up the phone and call ICE on behalf of families to find out why someone had been detained and where they had been sent, but I can no longer do that,” Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins said to The Fulcrum. “Maryland is now designated as a sanctuary state because of that law. I believe it has emboldened the Trump Administration to say: you laid this down, you passed laws that restrict cooperation with federal agents, now we are coming in.”
And they have. August and September saw a surge of arrests and detentions across Maryland and Virginia. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 1,328 people were arrested during the first two weeks of August in a sweep dubbed “Operation Safe Community.”
Immigrant rights groups, including We Are CASA Maryland, say that fewer than a third of those arrested had prior criminal convictions. In early September, an ICE operation in a residential area of Frederick, Maryland, prompted neighbors to form a human chain around a targeted house, resulting in several protesters being beaten with batons. State senators and members of Congress have demanded an investigation into ICE tactics in Maryland.
According to the Deportation Data Project, 9,168 arrests were documented in Maryland from January 2025 to July 2026. “Many sheriffs have pushed this false narrative that ICE had stayed out of counties where there was collaboration with federal agencies,” Sebastian Brown, campaign strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said to The Fulcrum. “This is not true. The data shows us that where there is collaboration with ICE, there’s also more street enforcement and a general presence of federal agents in those communities.”
An analysis published in October by The Prison Policy Initiative shows a decline in mass deportations in places that restrict collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE. Immigrants in Maryland have more protections than those in other states, but even here, they live with the constant fear of being picked up by ICE regardless of their legal status.
At San Mateo parish in Hyattsville, Maryland, the Reverend Vidal Rivas, who was featured in TIME magazine for his role as a legal guardian to dozens of immigrant children, told The Fulcrum, “Trauma is personal and collective. Even people with legal documents experience panic.” His parishioners who do regular check ins with ICE must now wear ankle monitors. “Is this truly necessary? It is a form of control meant to be humiliating. It is like living in an open jail,” he said.
Despite the climate of fear, immigrant day laborers across Maryland continue to gather around Home Depot stores or at established pickup spots like the parking lot across from the Crossroads Farmers Market in Langley Park, Maryland. Their numbers have dwindled, and many nearby Latino-owned shops have no customers. When I visited on a Wednesday morning, a few women walked around the market and sat near day laborers, ready to document ICE raids.
“Our area has been greatly impacted by ICE terrorizing our community,” Omar Marroquin, Farmers Market Program Manager with Crossroads Community Network, said to The Fulcrum. “The community is strong and resilient. People know that fear is not going to feed their families. Fear is not going to pay their bills. To survive, they must push the fear to the back of their minds and continue their lives.”
–
A Question of Trust: What Maryland’s New Laws Mean for Immigrant Communities was first published by the Latino News Network and is republished with permission.
Beatrice Spadacini is a journalist who writes about social justice and public health.
Keep ReadingShow less
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on October 28, 2026.
(Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Pete Hegseth and the High Price of Compromised Governance
Nov 10, 2026
Just days after a historic midterm election in which everyday Americans sent a clear, undeniable demand for political accountability and transparency, the halls of Congress have devolved into a new theater of crisis. Republican Representative Thomas Massie’s introduction of eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has thrown the Department—and the nation’s fragile democratic norms—into uncharted territory.
Massie, a longtime Trump critic who plans to retire from Congress at the end of the year, accuses Hegseth of bypassing Congress and violating constitutional limits on war powers.
Speaking on the House floor, Massie argued that Hegseth had overstepped his authority through U.S. military action involving Iran. Hegseth “has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as secretary of defense,” Massie said, adding that he “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.”
According to Massie’s announcement, the first article “charges Secretary Hegseth with waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat.” The article further asserts that “it establishes that the war was unlawful from its inception.”
There is little doubt that Hegseth's turbulent tenure deserves fierce criticism. From allegations of bypassing the War Powers Resolution by launching unauthorized military actions in Iran and Yemen, to the tragic strike on an Iranian school that resulted in mass civilian casualties, his leadership has operated on a doctrine of unilateral defiance. Add to that the extrajudicial targeting of crews in the Pacific, the reckless capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and chilling threats to prosecute critics like Senator Mark Kelly for exercising free speech, and we see an administrator who treats international law and constitutional constraints as mere suggestions. Hegseth’s ongoing assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has already compromised internal national security and alienated the very communities that make our military strong. By any objective metric of steady governance, his record is an absolute failure.
But as a journalist and advocate for systemic democratic reform, I am compelled to look past the political theater and ask the central, sobering question: Does Pete Hegseth legally deserve impeachment?
Under Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, impeachment requires a threshold of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The legal case brought by Massie holds genuine structural merit, particularly regarding the separation of powers. Waging unauthorized warfare in direct violation of statutory law and intentionally subverting Congressional oversight represent exactly the kind of executive overreach the Founders sought to curb.
Yet, history and recent political reality remind us that impeachment is rarely a purely legal exercise—it is inherently a political instrument. As Jonah Goldberg recently noted in The Fulcrum regarding the broader debates surrounding accountability in this administration, the line between constitutional duty and political strategy is dangerously thin. If the House moves forward with a vote within the required 48 hours, it risks hyper-politicizing what should be a sober legal process. With House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaling a united Democratic front and the slim Republican majority teetering on a knife's edge, a vote to impeach might satisfy a desperate public hunger for accountability, but it could further fracture an already broken legislative branch.
Which brings us to the final dilemma: Should Donald Trump fire him?
For the sake of our national security and global standing, the answer is an unequivocal yes. President Trump has spent the days following the midterms trapped in an alternate-reality delusion, refusing to accept that voters delivered a devastating verdict on his administration’s chaotic governance. Defending Hegseth as the victim of a "political sham" only deepens this blindness.
True leadership requires recognizing when a cabinet official has become a liability to the republic. Leaving Hegseth at the helm of our military forces further isolates America on the world stage and erodes domestic trust. Trump should fire Hegseth immediately to restore structural integrity to our defense institutions—not to appease Congress, but to show that his administration can, for once, prioritize the stability of our democracy over personal loyalty.
Because Massie introduced the measure as a privileged resolution, House Republican leaders must bring the impeachment articles to the floor within two legislative days. GOP lawmakers could also move to table or dismiss the measure, but doing so would require support from a majority of the House.
The House needs only a simple majority to approve the articles of impeachment. If adopted, the matter would then move to the Senate, where senators would decide whether to convict Hegseth and remove him from office.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
Keep ReadingShow less
Voters cast their ballots inside a polling location at the Bridge of Hope Church on November 3, 2026 in Youngstown, Ohio.
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Democracy Won as American Voters Spoke Loudly
Nov 10, 2026
Turnout and free exercise of the vote, including in many super-gerrymandered districts, was decisive on November 3, despite various attempts at suppression. Fear and hate mongering, floods of disinformation, avalanches of political cash, and coercive deployment of federal agencies in the runup to November 3 did not stop Americans from speaking loudly for change.
That expression was safeguarded by officials in the multitude of US election jurisdictions and by over 600,000 poll workers and ballot counters. Civic groups, electoral candidates, and political organizations assisted registration and voting with hotlines, door-to-door engagement, and pollwatching. In many places citizen groups organized protection efforts outside the polls to encourage voters and impede interference.
The elections were also guaranteed by rapid, decisive court decisions against unconstitutional federal interference. That was the result of cases brought by states attorneys general and lawyers representing individual voters, unions, civil rights and other citizen groups. And, many sources spoke across numerous platforms to reassure voters that their votes would count.
In short, the architecture of American democracy withstood substantial attempts to dismantle it.
That’s not to say that the battle with authoritarianism is nearly over or that the system does not need reinforcing and reform. So-called election deniers - who in reality are election subverters - will likely double down where they can. Plus, the ideologues of MAGA-ism still control the executive branch and will quickly turn to planning even as recriminations echo through their ranks. Steven Miller’s ascent to White House Chief of Staff proved the point.
Nonetheless, American democracy won the midterms every bit as much as did Democratic candidates. And, diligence is needed to deliver positive change across the policy spectrum, including buttressing trustworthy elections.
The “Blue Tsunami” encompassed major voting shifts by practically every democratic group. It swept across the country and struck up and down the ballot. Price rises for groceries, gas and diesel fuel - driven by consequences of an illegal war in Iran and irrational tariffs - combined with broader economic complaints. But, exit polls showed that voters also rejected MAGA immigration brutality, which was illustrated in deeply personal ways by hundreds of people placing their “I Voted” stickers on the makeshift memorials for victims of ICE murders in Minnesota, Texas, and Maine.
The state of democracy was also a significant concern noted in exit polls, and voters demonstrated that through referendum results concerning voter rights on a number of issues. The historic firsts among Senators, Governors, and other elections of African American, Native American, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ candidates - including razor thin Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi - and the number of victories for women candidates, illustrate that the majority of voters stood up against racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and misogynistic attacks.
This is a moment to celebrate the workings of democracy and rededicate ourselves to making democracy work for everyone.
That was the resounding message sent by midterm voters. With decisive majorities in both houses of the US Congress, a majority of State governorships, the increased number of states where both governors and legislatures were freed from MAGA control, there is a crucial opportunity to demonstrate that the mandated change can be accomplished. That change can be realized only if citizens demand it.
We must demand accountability of those who promise economic affordability and accountability for the brutality, corruption, and gross power grabbing that we’ve been experiencing in our country. In other words, we should exhale a bit, party a little, and rise to meet the responsibilities of citizenship.
Pat Merloe provides strategic advice to groups focused on democracy and trustworthy elections in the U.S. and internationally. He has engaged with those promoting credible elections in more than 60 countries over four plus decades.
Keep ReadingShow less
Load More